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Song for Monica
This multifaceted vibraphone solo by Rod Kosterman is both a lilting ode to a youthful first love and a painful reflection on the suicide of a friend, a friend who was that same first love. The free opening introduces a series of ethereal lines that hang over a triplet ostinato. At times dissonant, the figures are always ascending and provide a forward motion and energy. That, along with a more consonant section, makes this a song not about a tragedy but rather a song to a much-loved and missed person whose own song is a complicated happiness.
Use of this product is governed by the license terms outlined here.
Dripping with pensive inflection and an uplifting lilt, this six-minute solo gracefully holds listeners’ hands as it walks them through an assortment of moods ranging from sorrow and honor to emptiness and hope. Written as a tribute to a friend and first love from youthful days, and also reflecting a life that ended in suicide, this work mimics jazz and blues idioms painted with a hint of Debussy.
The piece opens with the main melody craftily presented in fragments between four-note interjections. The melody is eventually realized in a smooth jazz style before it shifts to a Debussy-esque section, complete with a triplet-ostinato harmonic bed. After several additional treatments of the melodic material, the work concludes with chordal figures that seem to float away, leaving mental and emotional room for listeners to reflect on relationships in their own lives. This solo is a gem that offers a wide variety of performance challenges and a paramount task of interpreting and projecting musical sentiment off the printed page.
—Joshua D. Smith
Percussive Notes
Vol. 52, No. 2. March 2014
This multifaceted vibraphone solo by Rod Kosterman is both a lilting ode to a youthful first love and a painful reflection on the suicide of a friend, a friend who was that same first love. The free opening introduces a series of ethereal lines that hang over a triplet ostinato. At times dissonant, the figures are always ascending and provide a forward motion and energy. That, along with a more consonant section, makes this a song not about a tragedy but rather a song to a much-loved and missed person whose own song is a complicated happiness.
Use of this product is governed by the license terms outlined here.
Dripping with pensive inflection and an uplifting lilt, this six-minute solo gracefully holds listeners’ hands as it walks them through an assortment of moods ranging from sorrow and honor to emptiness and hope. Written as a tribute to a friend and first love from youthful days, and also reflecting a life that ended in suicide, this work mimics jazz and blues idioms painted with a hint of Debussy.
The piece opens with the main melody craftily presented in fragments between four-note interjections. The melody is eventually realized in a smooth jazz style before it shifts to a Debussy-esque section, complete with a triplet-ostinato harmonic bed. After several additional treatments of the melodic material, the work concludes with chordal figures that seem to float away, leaving mental and emotional room for listeners to reflect on relationships in their own lives. This solo is a gem that offers a wide variety of performance challenges and a paramount task of interpreting and projecting musical sentiment off the printed page.
—Joshua D. Smith
Percussive Notes
Vol. 52, No. 2. March 2014
